Physical activity’s big part to play in developing children
BERT BEAUMONT, Church Street, Darfield
It was good to read that the Barnsley Schools’ Alliance are seeking to ‘boost exam results’ and improve students’ access to ‘rich extracurricular activities, trips and visits’.
These two are closely linked – good schools have long recognised that providing enjoyable activities alongside the academic offer stimulates students and improves results.
Sadly the situation is now that Barnsley secondary schools have the best-ever facilities but the worst level of extracurricular activities since the 1950s.
Except for football, rugby league, boxing and basketball, national teams are disproportionally made up of players who attended private, fee-paying schools because state schools – especially in areas like Barnsley – have opted out of providing access to competitive sport, except for a low level of football and netball teams.
After World War Two, grammar and secondary moderns – and then comprehensive schools to a varying extent – tried to offer the extracurricular activities available in fee-paying schools.
This was mainly due to teachers doing voluntary after-school sessions in sport, music and drama.
In Barnsley, this included cricket, badminton, hockey and basketball teams, school choirs and bands. In the current situation, for a variety of reasons, this no longer applies in most state schools but private schools continue to provide these opportunities.
State schools that continue to do this are sought after by knowledgeable parents, that’s why many people living on the Wakefield side of Barnsley send their children to Kettlethorpe and other Wakefield schools.
Last week, a primary schoolboy’s parent asked me which Barnsley school he could choose that did basketball and I had to say: ‘sorry. none do’.
Competitive sport does not necessarily mean inter-school games; within schools inter-form or house (if applicable) competitions are easy to arrange.
If Barnsley’s academies were serious about improving things they’d look to provide a diverse enrichment programme for 90 minutes after the school day and tell parents about this.
Some secondary schools, for example in London, are open from 8am to 7pm, providing a timetabled range of activities and opportunities. In our secondaries there is usually an exodus from as early as 2.30pm.
Sadly Ofsted doesn’t inspect and report on secondary extracurricular provision. A government that really wanted to ‘level up’ would include after school curricular activities in the inspection regime. Schools would then respond and things would improve.
Until that happens, volunteers who try to provide opportunities in sport for young children by running junior clubs will continue to have to try to raise funds in order to access secondary school facilities.
This is due to the excessively high letting rates charged by the Barnsley academies. Sadly I’ve found it’s often cheaper to pay the other team to have a basketball fixture on their court than to try to fund a home game in Barnsley at weekends.